Mike Spinelli

Audi wants to take over the world. Well, not really. It does want to take on BMW by increasing its line to 40 models and selling 1.4 million vehicles globally by 2015. According to Herr Chairman, one of those models, the A2, will be totally reworked to attack the Mini Cooper full on. Company sources told AutoWeek the new A2 — set to arrive in 2008 — will be based on the Volkswagen Polo (!) and will look like the Shooting Brake concept Audi unveiled last year at the Tokyo Motor Show. Production on the last A2, an ungainly little runabout that sold poorly in western Europe, ended in 2005. Could the new model be the rumored A1 that everyone's been yammering about?